I have been thinking about crew survivability, I have heard of armor that is backed with corn starch and water, that turns solid on impact, a space suit made of a very strong material that is conductive could be coated in a piezo electric layer of diamond, this layer could potentially absorb p-waves. And emmit it as energy, the fact that it is diamond would shatter a piercing projectile, a layer of kevlar in beetween the diamond piezo electric scales and the cornstarch could catch the projectile, and a final layer of kevlar could be hopefully intact, since diamond also is an excellent conductor of heat, a thermoelectric electric layer may be added.

Acceleration is still an issue.

Add in a armored para-shoot and ejection seats, and very scary things can be survived.

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

I have been thinking about crew survivability, I have heard of armor that is backed with corn starch and water, that turns solid on impact, a space suit made of a very strong material that is conductive could be coated in a piezo electric layer of diamond, this layer could potentially absorb p-waves. And emmit it as energy, the fact that it is diamond would shatter a piercing projectile, a layer of kevlar in beetween the diamond piezo electric scales and the cornstarch could catch the projectile, and a final layer of kevlar could be hopefully intact, since diamond also is an excellent conductor of heat, a thermoelectric electric layer may be added.

Acceleration is still an issue.

Add in a armored para-shoot and ejection seats, and very scary things can be survived.

IIRC the so called custard armour as in using a non Newtonian fluid for protection is actually made with nano silicon dioxide in a solvent i cant recall the name of the cornstarch and water is an analogy to show how the principle works. I tell you this as custard on your face now may prevent a bullet in your guts later on the don't try this at home principle

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Sounds heavy. You've got one thing right, any spacesuit design is going to be a composite. No single material is going to have the all proper statistics to do everything required of it. The colloid saturation layer (Corn starch, and water, or whatever you're using) would have to be pretty thick, it's not some magical substance that instantly negates the momentum of an object. That thick bulky layer will restrict movement, in an environment where you're already reduced to slo-mo due to the inflation of your suit.

As for "Armor" are you planning on getting shot at? Micrometeroids, and Kessler debris moving at orbital velocities carry more energy than you're going to be able to withstand in anything you can wear, and move around with your own muscles. I won't get too deep in the maths here, but the momentum is basically the mass, times the velocity, times the velocity again. At a minimum of about 5 miles a seccond, that 25M/S is enough to put a paint fleck through your armor, you, and your armor again, and that's not taking into account that you're moving too, so the likeliest collision is not in the same direction you're going, and therefore even faster.

The main things I would worry about in such a design are air tightedness, and radiation. Those little particals are a lot mor common up there, and can kill you just as deader, long after you re-enter the habitat.

Diamond is hard, rigid, and not all that easy to manufacture in armor sized pannels. We may be able to fix that last bit eventually, but the other thing about this hardness is it's rather brittle. It's expensive, but you can actually shatter a flawless gem quality stone with a hammer, and anvil made of steel much softer than the gem. This makes it less than ideal for stopping high velocity impacts. Those "P-waves" you're talking about is the shockwave from the high velocity impact which overloads the inelastic property of the material, causing it to break down completely into a bag of useless powder. Make that sharp, abrasive powder harder than anything it happens to be contained in, which is in turn less than ideal for the rest of your layers. Kevlar's abrasion resistance? Not really rated to diamond powder.

Graphite might actually be a better carbon allotrope for this application. It has a higher compressive strength, better thermal resistance, and doesn't shatter. Unfortunately, it's a solid lubricant (like Teflon, but not as much) so probably wouldn't slow it down much. I assume that's what the colloid saturation layer is for. I'd probably use such a composite on the habitat, rather than a suit, since flexibility isn't an issue, and it's the more likely to be hit due to it's size, and not spending most of your time outside. It could be doped, in the colloid layer with radiation absorbant substances, like graphite.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

The idea was for an explosion on take off, I am not sure what the best composite would be but the thought for the very thin diamond layer was to absorb p waves with the piezoelectric effect, and heat with the thermionic effect,the hard outer layer could be anything you want, carbon fiber over graphite with interwoven carbon nano-tubes?

I have been thinking about a diamond printer, like a inkjet but with a arc furnace and a feed stock, pulsing

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

but the idea at this point is to print a layer on a graphite panel, and then have that protected by another woven carbon layer, so non Newtonian as a inner layer, the graphite coated in cvd diamond and then that assembled into a almost knight armor like interlocking structure, then a matrix of carbon/carbon nano tube matrix could be the final layer. almost like a suit for the suit...

so, you would don the dough boy armor, then step into the back of the bigger armor, then a back pack would close the suit, while connecting up to quick connects on the inside suit, I think two cameras and small eye sized screens are better then a glass face shield.

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.